You’re Better Off With No Website Than a Bad One

Their web sites are hindering rather than helping too many interior design professionals.

That’s my conclusion after surveying hundreds of web sites created by interior designers, kitchen and bath professionals, home stagers, window fashion specialists, architects, and others throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Most of the sites are long on meaningless generalities, short on specifics and lacking in useful information about design services and products.

As a result, they disqualify rather than qualify design professionals from the kind of clients they want and need.

Many sites are difficult to navigate and wordy.

Their home pages are full of vague references to things like “imaginative spaces,” “value added facilities solutions,” “nurturing environments,” “conceptual expertise,” and “stylish flair.”

Huh?

The web sites I reviewed do a dismal job of differentiating these design professionals.

Then, too, the words contained on their sites are too big and the photographs they use to show off their work are too small.

All this, at a time when studies show the average web site visit is two clicks and less than four seconds.
 
That means if a visitor to your site can’t figure out in two clicks and under four seconds what makes you special, you lose.

My Big Splash. Little Cash Marketing Materials Manual focuses, in part, on web site do’s and don’t’s.

Included in that Big Splash Manual is this list of the Dirty Dozen Website Woes:

Your web site doesn’t work if it…

+ lacks a POWERFUL home page

+ lacks a focal point

+ doesn’t give the visitor a “next step” (buy this, download that, etc.)

+ isn’t easy to navigate

+ isn’t updated regularly

+ lacks photo captions

+ contains too much “flash” and other special effects

+ packs too much information onto one page

+ contains too much text

+ contains text and/or photos that are too small
 
+ makes the user scroll sideways

+ uses busy backgrounds that make text hard to read

Fred Berns is the world’s leading business coach for interior design professionals and design industry partners.